Earlier on at my time here at the Weekly, I lamented that somehow the internet had not seemingly captured a JJ, (THE OWNER AND) the King of Beepers ad somewhere in the cloud of online nonsense.

Well, while we're still far away from a true archive of the JJ Era, guy-who-makes-movies Adam Ray has uploaded at least one ad to YouTube for our collective enjoyment. Activation, of course, required.

Republican Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Thomas has unveiled his border-security plan. It includes a wall that stretches across the state—and it appears big chunks of Southern Arizona will be left on Mexico's side of the wall. Howie Fischer reports:

The majority of the land along Arizona’s 376-mile border with Mexico is controlled by the federal government and Native American reservations, primarily the Tohono O’odham Nation. Thomas said fencing along the border is the ideal scenario, but acknowledged that he may not be able to get federal and tribal permission to put fencing on the land they control.

If he can’t get permission, Thomas said he would use a “fallback line,” which would fence off areas further north, along the border with federal and tribal land.

“And we will build the fence as necessary here to funnel the drug and human trafficking network up into an area that is much easier to corral and to control. With a combination of troops and fencing, we can get that job done. This is what it’s going to take,” he said.

In some areas, the fence would actually be about 200 miles north of the Mexican border. Thomas said checkpoints would monitor road traffic through the fenced-off area.

Thomas denied that his fallback line would wall off a substantial chunk of southern Arizona.

“They’ll be able to get through, through roads,” he said. “If you’ve driven along the border, there already are checkpoints. So really what you’re doing is to the extent that we have to move farther north, that’s what we’d be doing.”

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: English is a mongrel language. Its roots are Germanic, but it’s borrowed heavily from French, Latin, Spanish, Scandinavia and just about every other language on Earth. There are many reasons for all this borrowing; one of them is that English just doesn’t have a word to describe a particular concept or phenomena, but another language does. So we borrow. In a previous column I mentioned the weather terms haboob and monsoon that we’ve borrowed from Arabic. And when it comes to sex and food, where would we be without the French? We could get by without the German doppelganger for a person’s ghostly double or alter ego, but why would we want to? Two other German favorites are schadenfreude, which is getting a kick out of someone else’s pain or misfortune, like when a waitress spills a tray full of drinks, and zeitgeist, the cultural spirit of a particular era, like the 1960’s.

I get it that it's a standard liberal trope to oppose the death penalty and then for conservatives to say that's soft on crime, and by all means, Joseph Rudolph Wood III did some awful, awful things for which he should be punished, but regardless of any of that, if we can't actually manage to execute people properly or with drugs that can be disclosed, it's hard for me to understand how this sort of thing is ok:

The Wednesday afternoon execution of convicted murderer Joseph Rudolph Wood III took nearly two hours, confirming concerns that had been raised by his attorneys about a controversial drug used by the state of Arizona.

Wood remained alive at Arizona's state prison in Florence long enough for his public defenders to file an emergency motion for a stay of execution with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, after the process began at 1:53 p.m. The motion noted that Wood "has been gasping and snorting for more than an hour" after being injected with a lethal cocktail of drugs.

According to Arizona Republic reporter Michael Kiefer, who witnessed the execution, lines were run into each of Wood's arms. After Wood said his last words, he was unconscious by 1:57 p.m. At about 2:05, he started gasping, Kiefer said.

"I counted about 660 times he gasped," Kiefer said. "That petered out by 3:33. The death was called at 3:49."

"I just know it was not efficient. It took a long time," Kiefer said.

Another reporter who witnessed the execution, Troy Hayden, said it was "very disturbing to watch ... like a fish on shore gulping for air."

An Arizona Republic interview with Michael Kiefer is below the cut.

Blu A Wine & Cheese Stop at 100 S. Avenida Convento is offering a "summer camp" for those who wish to learn "how to navigate your way around the expanding world of wine and cheese being produced by today's artisans."

Camp takes place on Fridays from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.

August 1: Wine & Cheese 101
Learn the basics for navigating your way around even the fanciest wine list or cheese case.

August 8: Reds & Whites & Bleus, O MY!
Explore the wide world of wine & cheese being produced by today’s artisans...and perhaps discover a few favorites your didn't know you had.

August 15: Pair like a Pro
Learn to pair the right wine with the right cheese everytime.

August 22: Host the Perfect Party
Build a cheese board and select wines that will impress even your foodiest friends.

Pay $20 and receive wine and cheese tastings plus a $10 rebate for retail purchases. Pre-registration is required. www.bluarizona.com; 314-8262 or http://www.eventbrite.com/e/wine-cheese-summer-camp-tickets-12305523151. 

If you have fond memories of 90's AM radio here in Tucson (and I'm not sure what this says about me, but I really do), you'll definitely want to set some time aside from actually working to check out Slow Jam King R Dub's documentary AM Mayhem: The Story of Tucson's Power 1490, which is now available to watch for free on YouTube. Put on some Cross Colors shorts and a bootleg Bart Simpson shirt and make an afternoon of it.

From The Explorer, www.explorernews.com:

Candidates for Oro Valley mayor and town council have agreed to participate in a forum Wednesday, July 30, at the Oro Valley Church of the Nazarene, 500 W. Calle Concordia.

The public is welcome to attend the free event, presented by the Greater Oro Valley Chamber of Commerce. Doors open at 5 p.m., giving guests one hour to meet casually with the candidates. The question-and-answer portion runs from 6 to 8 p.m. in the church's sanctuary.

Incumbent Mayor Satish Hiremath and challenger Pat Straney are first on stage, answering questions from Chamber President / CEO Dave Perry and Thelma Grimes, editor of The Explorer Newspaper and Inside Tucson Business.

Following the mayoral debate, town council candidates Don Bristow, and incumbent council members Joe Hornat, Mary Snider and Vice Mayor Lou Waters field questions.

There will be no questions from the audience. Grimes is soliciting questions from Explorer readers, and some of those may be asked during the evening. A brief presentation on the home rule question is also planned.

Residents who want to submit questions can email them to Grimes at [email protected]. Oro Valley voters make decisions on their elected leadership at the Aug. 26 primary. In addition to the mayor's slot, there are 3 council seats on the ballot. If majorities are not established in August, voters may face the decisions again in November.

For information on the forum, call 297-2191, or e-mail [email protected].

Not much else to say about that image—it's how Tucsonans get through July and August. But the good news is the partial screen shot above was taken early yesterday, and since then, depending on what weather service you are viewing, most forecasts have lowered today's high temperature down around 106° to 104°. And our monsoon storms appear to be coming to the rescue, as chances of rain have been upgraded from that 10% figure to 30% to 40%, increasing as the day wears on.

And though it was predicted on Monday, it does not look like Tucson will top the highest temperature ever on this day, 109°, achieved in 1987. And nowhere near Tucson's all-time high of 117°, which was recorded on June 26, 1990.

Then again, as of 11:30 a.m., we've already passed the century mark. Keep refreshing that radar map.

Here are Antigone Books best-sellers for the week ending July 18, 2014:

























1. The Fault in Our Stars
John Green ($12.99)

2. The Silver Star
Jeannette Walls ($16)

3. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
Ransom Riggs ($10.99)

4. Writing from the Senses: 59 Exercises to Ignite Creativity and Revitalize Your Writing
Laura Deutsch ($14.95)

5. Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn ($15)

6. Spider Woman's Daughter: A Leaphorn & Chee Novel
Anne Hillerman ($9.99)

7. Tequila Mockingbird: Cocktails with a Literary Twist
Tim Federle ($15)

8. The Signature of All Things
Elizabeth Gilbert ($17)

9. The Lowland
Jhumpa Lahiri ($15.95)

10. The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Neil Gaiman ($14.99)
— 

When you're talking about kids filling out an application for a charter school, don't call it an "application"; call it an "enrollment form." Don't talk about a charter school's "staff"; instead, call them "teachers" or "school leaders." Charters don't have a "market share"; they have a "student share." They don't "experiment"; they "innovate." Oh, and all those kids and their parents? Never, never call them "consumers"; they're "families."

You can learn all this and more in the 2014 Charter School Messaging Notebook put together by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. (Hat tip to the great blog EduShyster.com for the catch.)

We hope this guide will help fine-tune the messaging you use on your website and in press releases, speeches, and media interviews. The results are clear: when we use words that work, people like what they hear — and that means more support for charter schools.

The 18 page pamphlet is chock full of useful information for charter operators and their PR people about how to market their schools. Lots of it is suggestions for good, positive messaging, but my favorite parts talk about what charter salespeople should avoid, "language we use every day [that is] actually turning parents, voters, and policymakers off."